But the _Daily Mail_ was still more unlucky. Starting last of all, the well-known light-weight who carried the fortunes of the "largest circulation of this earth" made his way forward through the fading light of Wednesday, gaining rapidly on his predecessors, and, confident in the excellent provision made for him, was getting out of his mount the last pound of pace, when a cut corner flung him against a barbed wire fence, which so terribly lacerated his leg that further riding was out of the question. Binding up his scratches as best he might, he found himself compelled to walk back thirty-five miles to Bloemfontein, unable to ride, and at the journey's end almost unable to stand. So the _Times_ and Reuter--each armed with a duplicate despatch from the Commander-in-Chief--were left to compete for the contingent advantage of getting first into Kimberley. And now was done a notable achievement. Browning, in his poem, "How we brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix," has chosen, by an odd accident, exactly the distance which divides Kimberley from Bloemfontein; but we can rest assured that the "good news" of the capture of the Boer capital sped on as fast as ever went the news across the flat plains of Flanders. Over the grey sage-brush of the veldt, over the high, dry grass, under the rare shade of poplar trees, where the horse was watered, along the red crumbling road or the mere beaten wheel track where a thousand waggons and twenty thousand animals had worn a temporary track, the hurrying hoof of the courier's mount lessened the long distance between the capital of the O.F.S. and the end of that wire of which the other lies in the capital of the world. In the afternoon of Wednesday three bullets whistled past the rider of the Agency, and the newspaper's courier had a similar experience at the same spot as he passed a little later. It soon became obvious that there was no possibility of getting into Kimberley in time to send the despatches before the office closed for the day, and the _Times_ despatch rider took the latter stages of the journey more easily. Reuter's man,[1] however, continued his ride at his utmost speed, and actually achieved what will long remain a record, travelling the entire distance on three horses in twenty hours and twenty minutes. [Footnote 1: Gilbert H. Stevens.] The need for such lengthy despatch riding luckily seldom occurs, as the expense is one of the heaviest items that can be incurred by newspaper representatives on behalf of their papers; only in the very exceptional circumstances in which the war correspondents found themselves at the capture of Bloemfontein would the enormous expenditure be justified. [Illustration: Who the deuce set this hash up. Find out. RK Proper names ought to be capped throughout but it's no use with this staff. FABLES FOR THE STAFF. THE ELEPHO[A]NT AND THE LARK'S NEST.